Why do you want to use dual sound card setup?

Why not ? The auditian has a better sbpro compatibility, a real opl3, a fully functionnal wavetable header while the awe64 can output 16 bit sound, can load several sound banks ...

In order to not make them conflict, you should put one sound card to IRQ 5, address 240 and whatever DMA available and the other to IRQ7, address 220, etc. I think you should put the audician to the IRQ7 as older games are usually hardcoded to use irq 7 and the audician is better with older games than the sb awe64

I think that some games will let you use two sound cards, maybe you'll have to tweak the settings a little bit, but sometimes I think they just assume that the sound card you chose for sfx will also be the sound card where the synth will be used

Yes, I myself use a dual SB configuration with a SBPro2 and SB16 on my main rig, one card has features that the other lack; and Audician 32 Plus on my second rig.
As you said, the Audician 32 has MPU-401 and Wavetable header, a great SBPro emulation and is a fantastic overall card for a retro rig.
That's why I asked... personally I wouldn't pair anything with an Audician 32 unless one REALLY wants CQM and shitty sound banks,
DOS games don't sound much different with a 16bit card.

@OP
I would put the AWE64 at A240 I5 D0 and Audician 32 at A220 I7 D1.
SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T4 for compatibility with old games.

Loop back the output from A32 to the Line-In of AWE64 make sure you don;t clip the input, also make sure the A32 is set to line level and not speaker level.
If you have external hardware mixer, use it.

James-F wrote:

DOS games don't sound much different with a 16bit card.

Depends on the game.

- It is more of an experiment with some purpose
- AWE64 can do "some" MT-32 emulation. Monkey Island doesn't sound bad, KQV however doesn't seem to work well with it.
- Audician was going to be primary and IRQ 7 and AWE IRQ 5
- General MIDI would definately be coming from the Dreamblaster unless for some reason, AWE would be a better option
- Main reason to include the AWE64 is SB16 support
- Another reason, I can really only have one DOS rig running, AWE64 would go into storage otherwise

And lastly, why not?

AWE64 -> Storage

James-F wrote:

AWE64 -> Storage

So if you are using both a SBPro2 and a SB16 setup, what is wrong with the AWE/Audician setup? Is the AWE64 implementation of the SB16 really that off?

The SB16 implementation is great, digital sound is better than any SB16 or earlier Creative card. I think the point is that you're doing so much with the Audician that the AWE64's role is pretty insignificant for all the effort it takes to use.

Exactly.
I use the SBPro2 and SB16 setup because I do comparisons and experiments so I use the authentic cards, but individually they are incomplete.
Audician 32 on the other hand is the best (IMO) and most complete card for a single card setup in a DOS machine.

Yet all of us could use DOSBOX and be done with it...

But what I'm hearing is that for SB16, the AWE64 is great and SB16 > SBPro?

Also, does the Audician + Dreamblaster make the AWE64 Gold pointless if you have an AWE64 Value?

GiSWiG wrote:

Yet all of us could use DOSBOX and be done with it...

Yes and No. 😀

SB16 > SBPro?

Not in my book.

does the Audician + Dreamblaster make the AWE64 Gold pointless

A Midi Synth (wavetable daughterboard) will sound much better than any AWE32/64 sound bank.
I have the Dreamblaster S1 and X2 and they sound excellent on the Audician 32.
Answer: Yes.

So you're saying the Audician 32's SBPro2 is better than the AWE64's SB16? (which is of course subjective)

BTW, does anyone know where these Audician 32 cards came from? Its like the retro gods just dropped them from the sky (and on to ebay). I watched Phil's Computer Lab video on them and he got it brand new in 2015 and I just got mine brand new sealed in box just a month ago. I can't seem to find anything about them before 2013.

CkRtech wrote:

Depends on the game.

I don't have any SBPro cards, but I think some games, like Decent, sound very nice on a SB16 CT17xx. The Noise Blaster does have that charming fat bass,
which reminds me a lot of the original Sega MegaDrive/Genesis. That may not strictly related to bit-ness or any DSP version, though. 😅

James-F wrote:

A Midi Synth (wavetable daughterboard) will sound much better than any AWE32/64 sound bank. I have the Dreamblaster S1 and X2 an […]
Show full quote

GiSWiG wrote:

does the Audician + Dreamblaster make the AWE64 Gold pointless

A Midi Synth (wavetable daughterboard) will sound much better than any AWE32/64 sound bank.
I have the Dreamblaster S1 and X2 and they sound excellent on the Audician 32.
Answer: Yes.

What I was meaning is that if I had the AWE64 Value and the Audician 32 w/ Dream blaster OR the AWE64 Value w/ the Dreamblaster connected to it, upgrading to the AWE64 GOLD is pointless.

James-F wrote:

Exactly.
I use the SBPro2 and SB16 setup because I do comparisons and experiments so I use the authentic cards, but individually they are incomplete.
Audician 32 on the other hand is the best (IMO) and most complete card for a single card setup in a DOS machine.

The only caveat being missing ADPCM formats in the Audician.

James-F: you've evaluated some Aztech cards, are there any remaining Aztech chipsets to be evaluated for SB Pro sound and feature compatibility?

The OPLSAx card has 16 bit capability via WSS, so you can ditch the AWE64.

The AWE64 might not do SB Pro but show us a game that is stereo and doesn't support SB16.

Dual sound cards is a pain, just chose one!

badmojo wrote:

The OPLSAx card has 16 bit capability via WSS, so you can ditch the AWE64.

Does WSS work under real DOS or while running the DOS game in Windows? (I just don't know)
But why WSS and not SB16? Is there much difference?

The AWE64 might not do SB Pro but show us a game that is stereo and doesn't support SB16.

I seen this phrase, maybe with different wording. I'm not entirely sure what you mean?

Dual sound cards is a pain, just chose one!

A lot of my job is taking painful software/hardware setups (sometimes people) and making them not a pain. This might be fun.

It's funny how complicated this stuff was when I was growing up. My parents got me a Tandy 1000 RLX, I had an 8-bit ISA Sound Blaster and that was it and it seemed simple and the best.

As far as the trade-offs of using Audician 32 + daughterboard, versus an AWE64 - I must share my own personal experience, including a couple of issues I encountered + the solutions suggested there by James-F:
Audician 32 Plus + Dreamblaster S1 - updated 07/2018

James-F wrote:

A Midi Synth (wavetable daughterboard) will sound much better than any AWE32/64 sound bank.

Well, I wouldn't say "much better", unless you have a fancy daughterboard. When comparing the Dreamblaster S1 versus the built-in AWE synth, I would perhaps say the S1 sounds "a bit" better, and mostly just "comparable but somewhat different".

Sound quality is not one the thing that would get me to choose S1 synth versus AWE synth. It is mostly compatibility - the titles that offer a General MIDI option is a superset of the the titles that offer an explicit AWE option.

GiSWiG wrote:

The AWE64 might not do SB Pro but show us a game that is stereo and doesn't support SB16.

I seen this phrase, maybe with different wording. I'm not entirely sure what you mean?

I believe, based on what I learned on these forums that in a nutshell it means the following:

SB16 (and AWE64) is backwards SB-compatible, but not SBPro-compatible. The main advantage of SBPro over SB is stereo support. However, in practice, few games implemented it. And those that do, typically have explicit SB16 support, so you can use that directly, without relying on the backwards compatibility.

Did I get that right? (question to the experts)

See section 3-8 of the handbook for the correlation between format support and DSP versions (therefore SB card family).
https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2011/reading … oundBlaster.pdf